We hear a great deal about finding your writer’s ‘voice’ and the importance of it, but the actual definition is often misunderstood. A writing 'voice' is generally the tone and style an author writes in. A new writer may find it difficult to find their voice because they lack confidence that the style in their heart is the correct one. In other words, to have the courage to write in your own unique way, no matter if a reader loathes it. To truly find your voice, you need to experiment with many different writing styles until you find the one that feels comfortable for you. Look at the style in which I am writing this article. My objective is to be informal, chatty and, hopefully, a little light-hearted because I have found that this style of writing is the most effective when writing an article. However, if I am writing a comedy stage play, my style would be completely different because my end goal and the audience would be different. 

You will find an experienced writer will have many voices to draw from, but there will always be one voice that is their true voice. So is a writing voice the same as a writing style?  Your writing voice is the internal dialogue you have, put on paper, whereas your writing style, including pace and tone, can vary. For example, I could describe a landscape in England, with a slow pace, describing every blade of grass and flower petal. In this style, I would be drawing the reader into slowing their pace of reading down, maybe to shock them with a revelation soon after. Or my reasoning could be because the genre of the novel is a romance and I want the reader to be relaxed. 

Let's see how this would look. 

'There’s a small lawn area, where she used to lie during warm summers, and by the hedge, the flowerbeds lent their hues to honor her. Colour would be too simple a description for there was a give and take, she gifted the beauty of the flowers, while they reflected on her creamy skin and added their perfume to her scent.'
OR
'See the green, it’s grass, it’s wet. And that’s all it could be. Earth’s verdant carpet? No, it’s food, we eat the grasses like the cows. And her, as if she cared, sucking the sun in her tiny bikini that brings whistles from the builders.'

Did you note the differences? In the second example, the sentences and words are a little shorter and the style is quite repetitive. By the way, neither of these styles is my 'voice' but for the effect, I want to achieve, it works. 

So how do you find your writing voice? The first thing you have to do is read lots of different books by a variety of authors. Many novice authors begin by imitating the voice and style of their favorite authors as a path to discovering their own voice. In time, as you gain experience, you will find a tone and style of writing that just feels comfortable for you. It is a style of writing that comes naturally to you. But it is by far a quick and easy process. Finding your unique voice requires a lot of writing, page after page and chapter after chapter. It may seem a long, drawn-out process, but the results are so rewarding. 

A great exercise I used was to write a short story, around 1,000 words, in three different styles. I used different characters to tell the story each time to make it easier and to tell the story from a different perspective. Like anything that is worthwhile, it takes a lot of practice and patience but the rewards are great when you can finally say to yourself that you know what your writing voice and style truly are.